Editorial: Poor return on our war investment

Saturday

Mar 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 29, 2008 at 12:27 PM

The Iraq war's cost in American lives is easier to calculate than it is to grasp. We can note that in five years, 4,000 troops -- and counting -- have been killed, but the loss of even one life touches so many others that the human toll can't be reduced to simple numbers.

The Iraq war's cost in American lives is easier to calculate than it is to grasp. We can note that in five years, 4,000 troops -- and counting -- have been killed, but the loss of even one life touches so many others that the human toll can't be reduced to simple numbers.

Grasping the war's cost in dollars is difficult for other reasons. There are current expenditures -- $507 billion so far -- and future obligations, which some estimates peg as high as $3 trillion. Numbers that large are hard for most people to comprehend.

It is less than fair to discuss spending on the war in terms of what else that money could buy. Every dollar spent on the war has been put on the federal government's credit card, so it's not as if that money was sitting in a box somewhere to be otherwise invested in roads, schools or health care. But it is instructive to note the size of our investment in Iraq in terms a little easier to understand.

That was the spirit in which state Rep. David Linsky, D-Natick, Mass., shared some numbers at a Framingham, Mass., gathering Friday. Citing a Web site -- www.nationalpriorities.org -- that provides a war spending calculator, Linsky said the Iraq war has, so far, cost Massachusetts taxpayers $14.8 billion. That amount could have provided:

- Health care for 4.4 million people, or

- 289,632 police and firefighters, or

- 1,538,718 scholarships for college students, or

- 568 new elementary schools, or

- 211,254 elementary school teachers, or

- 51,282 affordable housing units.

Coincidentally, the $14.8 billion currently spent on the war also totals the cost of Massachusetts' infamous Big Dig. Everyone agrees all that money wasn't well spent, but at least we got a bridge, some tunnels and a quicker trip to Logan Airport for the investment. The only return on our investment in Iraq so far: death, disillusionment and lost prestige.